Ask HN: What podcasts do you listen to?

[joe8756438]

My podcast listening dropped off a cliff when suddenly I no longer had a commute a few years back. Recently I've been interested in finding new shows -- daunting task, better to ask!

What are y'all listening to on the tech and general interest side?

[surprisetalk]

I maintain a list with ratings here, but it's a bit outdated:

[1] https://taylor.town/podcasts

    99% Invisible
    Articles of Interest
    Conversations with Tyler
    Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
    Everything Everywhere Daily
    Nice Try!
    Radiolab
    The Memory Palace
    Quanta Science Podcast
    Cortex

Good complete series:

    The Anthropocene Reviewed
    S-Town
    On the Metal
    Hello Internet

---

EDIT: I can't update my website because cloudflare is down haha

I'll try to update later today.

A lot of my rankings have changed as podcasts often degrade in quality over time

---

EDIT:

Series that I enjoyed at some point in the past:

    Against the Rules with Michael Lewis
    Akimbo: A Podcast from Seth Godin
    American Innovations
    Brains
    Cautionary Tales
    Chemistry for Your Life
    Dear Hank & Jon
    Deep Questions with Cal Newport
    Endless Thread
    Everything is Alive
    Experimental History
    Freakanomics
    Harmontown
    Hey Riddle Riddle
    The Joy of Why
    Land by Hand
    Monday Morning Podcast with Bill Burr
    More Perfect
    Patented: History of Inventions
    The Permaculture Podcast
    The Peter Attia Drive
    Planet Money
    Reasonably Sound
    Reconcilable Differences
    Reply All
    Revisionist History
    The Strong Towns Podcast
    Stuff You Should Know
    The Tim Ferriss Show
    Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson
    Twenty Thousand Hertz
    

Support these cool tech podcasts produced by my friends:

    devtools.fm
    The Changelog
    Elm Town
    Future of Coding
    Hest
    Software Unscripted
    TODEPOND PODCAST

[withzombies]

Articles of Interest is _so_ good. It's a great take on the 99% Invisible "design of everyday things". I was definitely blind to clothing and textiles and Articles of Interest is really enlightening.

You may enjoy Search Engine by PJ Vogt[1], it's really well done. Its the quality of the original Gimlet Podcasts and a bit different than his previous show (Reply All).

[1] https://pjvogt.substack.com

[vidyesh]

> A lot of my rankings have changed as podcasts often degrade in quality over time

I totally agree, some podcasts start off so good but then they are in there to appeal the masses than to stick with their original theme/style.

And it becomes really difficult to tell others only listen to this, this and this episode but afterwards its alright.

So I am curious how do you rate them(collectively)? Is it just a arbitrary rating system or is there a science/logic behind it? I wish a podcast app could prompt me after each listen to rate the episode and then use that to update the rating of the podcast(as a whole) based on what I personally gave than the public rating system which is very flawed as a recommendation engine.

I think this should be fairly easy to incorporate on ones personal website too, a way to let your listening history be personal recommendation engine than we relying on our memory to recommend/suggest. And if you stop listening to it and as episodes pile on, it can clearly drop in rating for you(?) or just go down the list.

[huevosabio]

HH and Conversations with Tyler are both great, will check out some of your other recommendations.

For history, the Fall of Civilizations Podcast is also fantastic.

[chalsprhebaodu]

Oh man, I love Hey Riddle Riddle.

[surprisetalk]

I used GPT to add links and short descriptions :)

My current listens:

• 99% Invisible (https://99percentinvisible.org): Design's unnoticed marvels explored.

• Articles of Interest (https://www.radiotopia.fm/podcasts/articles-of-interest): A podcast about clothing, style, and wear.

• Conversations with Tyler (https://conversationswithtyler.com): Tyler Cowen's dialogues on economics and culture.

• Derek Sivers (https://sive.rs): Musings of a musician turned entrepreneur.

• Radiolab (https://www.radiolab.org): A journey through curious scientific and philosophical landscapes.

• The Memory Palace (https://thememorypalace.us): History's footnotes brought to life.

• Cortex (https://www.relay.fm/cortex/): Two YouTubers discuss productivity and workflow.

• What's Your Problem? (https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem): Problem-solving strategies in business and life.

• Software Unscripted (https://twitter.com/sw_unscripted?lang=en): Conversations on the realities of software engineering.

Bingeworthy series that are completed or on indefinite hiatus:

• S-Town (https://stownpodcast.org/): A deep dive into a quixotic Alabama tale.

• The Anthropocene Reviewed (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene-reviewed): John Green reviews facets of the human-centered planet.

• On the Metal (https://oxide.computer/podcast/on-the-metal): Tech veterans unpack computing and engineering layers.

• Björk: Sonic Symbolism (https://mailchimp.com/presents/podcast/sonic-symbolism): Exploring the iconic artist's musical narratives.

• My Year in Mensa (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-year-in-mensa/id149...): A satirical take on high IQ societies.

• The Trojan Horse Affair (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trojan-horse-affai...): Investigation of a British school controversy.

• Hello Internet (https://www.hellointernet.fm/): General banter on life, universe, and everything in between.

Support these cool tech podcasts produced by my friends:

• devtools.fm (https://www.devtools.fm/)

• The Changelog (https://changelog.com/podcast)

• Elm Town (https://elmtown.simplecast.com/)

• Future of Coding (https://futureofcoding.org/podcast)

• Hest (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hest/id1484697758)

• Software Unscripted (https://feeds.resonaterecordings.com/software-unscripted)

• TODEPOND PODCAST (https://www.todepond.com/)

[celeritascelery]

Some of my favorite technical podcasts

Oxide and friends: https://oxide.computer/podcasts/oxide-and-friends

On the metal: https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal

Handmade network: https://handmade.network/podcast

Signals & threads: https://signals-threads.simplecast.com/

[andy_xor_andrew]

I'll be the weirdo and admit... I enjoy true crime podcasts.

But!!! But... I don't like the mindless exploitative stuff (which is unfortunately 95% of it). I like the hard-cutting journalism stuff.

My favorite 3 are Swindled, Court Junkie ('Court', not 'Crime'), and In the Dark.

Swindled is a dry recounting of white-collar crimes. Funny and informative and kinda scary.

Court Junkie focuses not on the crimes, but on the court cases, and is 75% real audio from the courtroom, with additional narration by the host.

And In the Dark is maybe the most gut-wrenching of them all, especially season 2. This podcast uncovered evidence in a wrongful conviction that ended up going all the way to the supreme court. This one is true door-to-door journalism - literally knocking on the doors of homes in a small rural Mississippi town to ask what people remember about a crime from decades ago, and ultimately taking down a corrupt district attorney. Just amazing.

[kayge]

For anyone interested in an intersection of True Crime and Tech/Hacking, you should definitely check out Darknet Diaries: "true stories from the dark side of the internet". The host, Jack Rhysider, has been at it for a couple of years+ now and continues to refine his story collection & fact-checking processes, all while steadily improving production value.

[digitalsushi]

My anti-answer is that podcasts have been making me sad (cause they are usually just the news, for me), and I've been listening to my late 90's late-teenager playlists on my commute to unspool my day, and force myself to remember nostalgic times and try to cope with everything. Basically using nostalgic music as a cheap drug.

[billywnyc]

"60 Songs That Explain The 90s" (there are more than 60...)

[aktenlage]

On the technical side, I love CoRecursive, enjoy Soft Skills Engineering, and recently started listening to Latent Space, which I also like so far.

[FanaHOVA]

Let me know if you have any feedback on Latent Space :)

[TheAceOfHearts]

I keep track of Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan's podcast releases and listen to em when the guest seems interesting.

I've listened to some episodes of Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal when he has interesting guests on. For example he recently did two podcasts with Joscha Bach who is always a really creative guy to hear from. Also learned about Machine Learning Street Talk because Joscha Bach was a guest on there and he was promoting his appearance.

Godbolt, the guy that made Compiler Explorer, also had a few podcast episodes which I enjoyed.

Someone already mentioned it, but Conversations with Tyler can be really good as well. He did a podcast with Paul Graham which HN readers might enjoy.

[Koealaquillage]

Tech: None really

Comedy: - L'apero du Captain (french, discussion about tech news and general news, and other less reputable things) - Deux heures de perdues (french, movies spoils with critics) - Las noches de Ortega (castellano, character impersonating and improbable stories) - My Dad Wrote a Porno (english, porn book spoil and critics)

Science: - Podcast Science (french, everything is in the name) - PlanetGeo (english, condensed lecture about geoscience topics) - ScienceDiction (english, links an actual word with an often suprising scientific stories) - Undiscovered (english, stories about scientific discoveries, how they happened and in which context. I think it is the best thing ever produced by human beings. But I may be partial)

History: - Culture 2000 (french, summary about a theme by four teachers who have tried to study it during the last two weeks) - Beyond Huaxia (english, history and cultural development of far-east asia with a strong accent of the territory that is today China)

News: - El hilo (spanish, south-american news) - Histoires du monde (french, locked-in on France Inter app, short summary of a world event)

Economy: - Planet Money/The Indicator (english, general economy podcasts covering the news or an economic concept. The second is shorter and more nerdy) - Freakonomics (english, behavioral economy. The recent episodes are less interesting and consist more often in interviews of people linked with the political world. It is made by one of the author of the books of the same name)

[BasilPH]

- Seldon Crisis: I know the host Joel personally, and he's such a great guy. The embodiment of software professionals being creatives.

- Volts by David Roberts: Interesting by itself, but makes me less pessimistic about the climate crisis. He talks to a lot of fascinating entrepreneurs, usually working with "hardware", which as a software engineer always feels like magic to me.

- 13 Minutes to the Moon: Blew me away, and it's relatively quick listen. It's a detailed retelling of the moon landing with original audio.

- Dolly Parton's America: Also a limited series. Goes into why Dolly Parton is such a cultural icon. Learned a lot about the US.

I'm professionally interested in podcasts since my company provides transcription services. We're launching a free magazine of podcast transcripts. If you enjoy knowledge-dense podcasts, feel free to suggest your favorites for transcription: https://withfanfare.com/podread/

[rounakdatta]

Been listening to Hardcore History recently - very very intriguing. Also, am a fan of a new video podcast by Amit Varma & Ajay Shah called [Everything is Everything](https://www.youtube.com/@amitvarma/featured). Note that latter can be a bit India-focussed at times.

[thaddeusmt]

A few tech and Python specific podcasts I've been listening to while I do dishes:

The Real Python Podcast Talk Python To Me Software Engineering Radio Maintainable

[Cenk]

Accidental Tech Podcast: https://atp.fm

[mikewarot]

It turns out too many of them are hosted on YouTube, so my listening habits will have to change.

  Hello Internet
  Cortex
  The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
  The Amp Hour Podcast
  Beau of the Fifth Column
  Peter Zeihan
  The Business of Machining
  The Wee Scone Variety Show
  Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
  Artificial Intelligence with Lex Fridman
  Dark Horse with Bret Weinstein
  The Portal with Eric Weinstein
  Joe Rogan (if he's got a good guest)
  The Anthropocene Reviewed

[IanCal]

Lost Terminal is wonderful as a story. The way things are revealed and the calm tones really elevate it. I don't want to spoil anything I'd just very strongly recommend it.

Seems there's text YouTube videos but it's also a regular podcast.

https://lostterminal.com/

It's also short, 5 mins each I think for the first series and 10 for the later ones.

[zerojames]

This Week in Google is my favourite podcast (they don't talk too much about Google though, a recurring theme they mention in the show).

They have a great panel: a reporter from Wired, a journalism professor and author, a photographer (who is also the network community manager), Leo (who hosts the show) and a rotating set of guests.

I am interested in every show they produce.

This Week in Tech is also great, but I prefer the TWiG panel :)

[jackthetab]

Logged in just to say that same thing.

[kseifried]

I listen to the #osspodcast Open Source Security Podcast. It cured my baldness and also is a great additive to soups and milkshakes.

https://opensourcesecuritypodcast.com/

I was not paid to post this message. This is a totally organic high quality review!

Seriously though, I wasn't paid, we do this for free.

[rickoooooo]

Your podcast is in my rotation of infosec podcasts along with:

darknet diaries

malicious life

Application security podcast

hacked

privacy security and osint show

Day[0]

shared security

I've been enjoying it. Thanks for putting it out there!

[daniel_reetz]

For curious hacker types interested in aerospace, infrastructure, and the history of computing, I HIGHLY recommend Omega Tau Podcast . For computing nerds, check out, for example, Episode 248. For flight nerds, Episode 91, for infrastructure nerds, Episode 146.

http://omegataupodcast.net/

[guhcampos]

A few I haven't seen on the list, by looking at my recent listens. I'm not saying all of them are good, I'll often listen to podcasts as background noise, so don't take this as sanctioning or recommentations:

- Science Vs (science) - Freakonomics Radio (curiosities) - If Books Could Kill (politics I guess) - The Atlas Obscura Podcast (curiosities) - Robinson's Podcast (philosophy of science) - Twenty Thousand Hertz (sound engineering) - Tiny Matters (science) - Unexplainable (curiosities) - Talk Python to Me (programming) - Decoder Ring (curiosities) - Ologies with Alie Ward (science, most of the time) - Sawbones (medical science) - Skeptoid (curiosities) - SciShow Tangents (science) - In Defense of Plants (... plants?) - You're Wrong About (curiosities) - No Stupid Questions (psychology) - Hidden Brain (Psychology) - Radiolab (curiosities) - Overthink (philosophy) - Philosophize This! (Philosophy)

Plus a whole bunch of Brazilian Portuguese shows, too.

[billbrown]

The best interviewer I've found is Peter Robinson for his Hoover Institution podcast "Uncommon Knowledge." He's got great guests and really elicits great answers. (He was a speechwriter for Reagan and the one that wrote his "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech.)

The best investing podcast I've found is "The Week Ahead" by Complete Intelligence. I look forward to it every weekend for its variety of guests and subjects.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy's "Invest Like the Best" podcast has a good variety of guests and he asks incisive and insightful questions.

National Review's "The McCarthy Report" has astute legal analysis from a former U.S. Attorney.

Institute for Justice's mutli-season exploration of the 14th Amendment "Bound by Oath" is well-produced, outrage-inducing, and fascinating.

"Breaking News" is a new podcast by Ben Hunt (of Epsilon Theory fame) that explores the news' nudges and narratives.

[freefaler]

What works for me best is not only to subscribe to a particular podcast but use "search-based" RSS feeds to track particular guests. On my Android phone "Podcast Addict" app can use search to create feeds based on keywords. So I put names of guests I found interesting and when they go to a new podcast it finds that episode.